Which metric more fully captures Lady Gaga’s global superstardom: the 15 million albums she’s sold to date, or the one billion views she reached this week on YouTube?

Though CDs are rapidly becoming a thing of the past, replaced by digital music, physical album sales still remain the gold standard for the industry. Isn’t it time that metric is updated to include the wealth of ubiquitous digital platforms? “The notion of tracking sales and correlating that to success is a bit antiquated,” says Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff. “There’s no single indicator you can look at now–you must look at everything.”

That means measuring not just physical but digital album and single sales, and pulling data from a variety of non-traditional platforms. The record industry must track downloads on iTunes and Amazon, fans on Facebook, followers and mentions on Twitter, streams on Pandora and MySpace, views on Vevo and YouTube and MTV, ticket sales on Ticketmaster–to name a few.

“When you look at Lady Gaga hitting a billion views, I think that’s a very positive wake-up call for the industry–that we need to think about the metrics of success differently,” says Joe Fleischer, CMO of media measurement firm Big Champagne. The Beverly Hills-based company recently developed Billboard rankings for the digital age. Called the Ultimate Chart, Big Champagne culls data from as many digital portals as possible to provide a more real-time portrait of an artist’s success.

“The right way to understand success is to include all of those points of contact that are meaningful into the charting environment,” explains Fleischer. “Just look at gold and platinum awards from the RIAA. When an artist like Disturbed reaches No. 1, are they now bigger than Taylor Swift? No. It means for just that one week they’ve sold more albums. It’s one component of success, but it does not give a consistent, undistorted view of the market.”

Indeed, after one week atop the Billboard charts, it’s common for artist sales to plummet 60% to 80%. But that doesn’t mean their success or popularity has experienced such a drop. Fans still watch videos on Vevo; they buy tickets for concerts; they follow artists on Twitter and post messages about them on Facebook. In other words, the artists are still relevant, regardless of their position in the Top 100 physical album sales.

Big Spaceship Lands Lucasfilm Digital Business

Indie Shop to Handle Social Media, Mobile for ‘Star Wars’ Production Company

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Lucasfilm, the entertainment production company behind the “Star Wars” franchise, has picked a shop with a fitting name, Big Spaceship, as its new digital agency of record.

The New York-based independent agency beat out a handful of undisclosed digital shops pitching the business, according to people familiar with the matter. It will handle websites, social media and mobile for Lucas Online, which also includes work for film franchises such as “Star Wars.”

Big Spaceship

–> Lucasfilm confirmed the relationship, though declined to elaborate. Kantar Media does not have ad spending data for the movie production company. Big Spaceship also declined comment for this story.

Over the last 10 years, Big Spaceship grew up largely handling digital production work, building websites for traditional ad agencies on a contract basis. These days the agency, which is run by CEO-founder Michael Lebowitz, says it only works with clients directly, with no agency middlemen.

The agency also counts General Electric, Wrigley, Microsoft and Google as clients.

Big Spaceship had $8 million in U.S. revenue in 2009, up 33% from the year prior, according to Ad Age DataCenter. The 50-person shop was also one of Ad Age’s Best Places to Work in 2010.